Hearing deficiencies can range from partial to complete hearing loss. Often, an individual's hearing ability varies across the range of audible sound frequencies, and many individuals have hearing impairments with respect to only select acoustic frequencies. For example, an individual's hearing loss may be greater at higher frequencies than at lower frequencies, or vice versa.
Hearing aids have been developed to alleviate the effects of hearing losses in individuals. Conventionally, hearing aids are configurable to amplify or otherwise modulate sounds to compensate for the particular hearing impairment of a patient. Each hearing aid is tuned by a hearing health professional to compensate for the unique variations of the individual's hearing loss in each ear.
Typically, a hearing health professional takes measurements using calibrated and specialized equipment to assess an individual's hearing capabilities in a variety of sound environments, and then adjusts the hearing aid parameters based on the calibrated measurements and a hearing profile generating algorithm typically provided by the manufacture. In some instances, the hearing health professional may create multiple hearing aid profiles by adjusting the hearing aid parameters differently for use in different sound environments or by applying different algorithms. Such hearing profiles include frequency and amplitude adjustments that can be applied to sound-related signals to compensate for a particular user's hearing deficiencies and to filter frequencies or reduce the volume in certain acoustic environments.
Unfortunately, from time-to-time the hearing aid settings may need to be adjusted, which typically requires the user to revisit the hearing health professional. Further occasionally, new algorithms may be published and old algorithms are updated. For the user to take advantage of such advances, the user will need to purchase new hearing aids or revisit the hearing health professional.
In the following description, the use of the same reference numerals in different drawings indicates similar or identical items.